Local man Joey Schendel, 19, looks for submerged items while helping neighbors salvage and clean their property in an area inundated after days of flooding, in Hygeine, Colo., Monday Sept. 16, 2013. <B><a href="http://photos.denverpost.com/2013/09/12/photos-massive-flash-flooding-along-front-range-of-colorado/">View more images from the Colorado floods.</a></b>

Colorado’s extensive flooding has prompted a steady stream of rescues, superhuman response, neighbors caring for neighbors and strangers going out of their way for strangers.

But there will also likely be overwhelming mental distress for some people affected by the floods, and at least one hotline is ready to take calls and lessen the burden.

The Mental Health Center of Denver passes on information for the “Disaster Distress Helpline,” a free and confidential form of first response to people feeling psychological strain. The number is 1-800-985-5990.

Floods bring multiple sources of stress. If a home isn’t ruined entirely, it may require a daunting level of cleanup. Kids are disrupted by relocations; in towns like Estes Park, road cutoffs are leaving people wondering how they’ll get to their jobs, or how tourists will get to them and bring the money that provides livelihoods.

The call center will help people talk through some of their symptoms and reactions, offer coping strategies, and refer callers to local help centers if they need more attention.

Michael Booth was a health care & health policy writer at The Denver Post before departing in 2013. He started his journalism career as an assistant foreign editor at The Washington Post before moving with family to Denver and taking a brief stint with the Denver Business Journal. During a 25-year career at The Post, he covered city and state politics, droughts, entertainment and wrote Sunday takeouts, and was part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams for breaking news coverage.

Using data from the Dartmouth Atlas – a source of information and analytics that organizes Medicare data by a variety of indicators linked to medical resource use – we recently ranked geographic areas based on markers of end-of-life care quality, including deaths in the hospital and number of physicians seen in the last year of life.

Wednesday morning two independent research teams, one based in the Netherlands and the other in California, reported that the deluge from Hurricane Harvey was significantly heavier than it would have been before the era of human-caused global warming.

Denver’s newest skyscraper will be home to one of the city’s most recognizable home-grown business by the end of next year. Chipotle is moving its 450 downtown corporate staff into the 1144 Fifteenth tower by the end of 2018.